


Something About Emma

by Pennin_Ink



Series: Something About Frieda's [2]
Category: Monsters and Other Childish Things, Mrs. Frieda's Halfway Home for Terrible and Freakish Children, The Drunk and The Ugly
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, Eating Disorder Recovery, Epilogue, F/M, Happy Ending, It Gets Better, Post-Campaign, Recovery, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2747927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pennin_Ink/pseuds/Pennin_Ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Few people have been through as much horror and pain as Emma Vaerbond. Few people have known self loathing and misery as deep as Emma Vaerbond. Far too many people have endured abuse like Emma Vaerbond. </p><p>They deserve to find peace and happiness. So does she. So I gave it to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something About Emma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nayt Knapp](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nayt+Knapp), [Matt Campen](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Matt+Campen).



It doesn’t work like this, she thinks, bringing the mug of coffee to her lips.

Life doesn’t work like this. She knows it doesn’t. She knows better than anybody that life is just a series of uphill battles, of struggling and fighting and falling and crying and standing back up until your legs can’t support you anymore. Until it’s over, and then nothing.

She knows she used to look forward to the nothing part. That once upon a time it seemed like the best possible reward for everything she’d been through. She doesn’t think that, now.

Now. There’s so much impossible wrapped up in _now_. Now she’s in a house that was built just for her. Now there’s sunlight pouring through the kitchen window, and dishes drying by the sink, and the whole room smells like the wildflowers sitting in a vase on the table.

Now she is standing at the window, sipping her coffee, and looking at the back yard where Scott is standing in the sun, wings bared and shining, feathers fully extended as if they could soak up the sunlight like plants do while he absentmindedly sprays water over the vegetable garden.

Life doesn’t work like this. She knows. People don’t fall in love at thirteen and fail to fall out of it. Wonderful boys don’t grow into wonderful men who cradle your heart in their hands like it was spun out of glass. Broken little girls do not knit themselves whole and live happily ever after.

Life doesn’t work this way.

Until it does. Until you wake up in the middle of the night with the man you love breathing slowly beside you and _feel_ the darkness curled up behind your heart slither away and leave you. Until you slip shakily into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror and _will_ yourself to become the worst of you...and nothing happens. No icy blood in your veins, no shadowy ears to mock your memories, just the same old faded scars, so pale you can barely see them anymore. Just the same red hair, tumbling over your shoulder because you’re just too busy to get it cut. Suddenly the worst of you is human.

Emma likes mirrors, now. She’s liked them ever since the first day it didn’t hurt to look in one. She keeps mirrored decorations on most of the walls, some tiny, some big, just so she can walk by them and catch a glimpse of herself, the roundness of her belly, the heft of her breasts, the full, smooth oval of her face. She likes to glance up and see Scott staring at her, openly admiring, a little awed, in the way he does when he thinks she can’t see him. She likes catching his eye, watching him approach from behind and wrap his arms around her waist, his feathers soft against her arms, his lips softer against her neck.

And if there are bad days, days when eating feels like a knife she’s taking to her own skin and the mirrors stab her eyes, days when every touch hurts and so she spits out words that hurt worse, days when Scott shrinks away from her or shouts back or has to hold her close and tight until she stops thrashing, well, she always knew life worked that way.  

She sees Scott look up, his bright golden eyes catching her out through the window, and she waves. He waves back with the hand holding the hose and water shoots out wildly in every direction. She watches him curse and flail as he drops the nozzle and she laughs. He gives her a dirty look.

Life, she thinks, really doesn’t work like this.

But people don’t have wings growing out of their arms, either. Demons don’t show up at your front door in a panic because their boyfriend’s parents are coming over for dinner in a few days. Former super soldiers don’t call you at ten in the morning to nervously ask if you’ll come with them to physical therapy. Best friends don’t bitch to you during lunch about accidentally burning their favorite shoes off _again_. Maybe her life makes its own rules.

Scott comes in through the back door, water dripping off his feathers and hair.

“Don’t you do it!” She cries, catching the wicked glint in his eyes.

“Don’t--”

But Scott is already shaking himself like a dog, splattering water all over the kitchen, the drying dishes, and her.

“Dammit, Scott!” She shouts, trying and failing to keep the laugh out of her voice as she sets down her coffee. “I have to be at the lab in forty-five minutes!”

“Oops.” Scott shrugs, entirely insincere.

He pulls her in by the waist, pressing her against his chest so the water on his skin soaks through her shirt. She snorts back laughter and lightly punches against his shoulders before darting in to kiss him. He wraps his arms around her and hums against her lips. She can feel his smile.

Who does this? She wonders. Who stays with their childhood sweetheart? Who lands the job of their dreams and keeps on loving it? Who faces down their demons, real and figurative, and _wins_?

Scott is warm against her and his feathers are slick, his skin tacky to the touch where the water is starting to dry as he kisses her, long and slow like he could keep it up all day, work be damned. His sword in its scabbard is hanging neatly on the wall above a stack of boxes full of charms and amulets ready to be shipped out.

And maybe it’s true. Maybe life really doesn’t work this way.

But theirs does.

**Author's Note:**

> Something About Emma is the second of my Something About Frieda's fics. Like Something About George, it was written back in May 2014. I wrote it mostly to see if I could pull off any characters from Frieda's aside from George. According to Nayt, I could.
> 
> Special thanks, therefore, to Nayt Knapp, voice of Emma Vaerbond in Mrs. Friedas. And special thanks to Matt Campen, voice of Scott Valle in Mrs. Frieda's. 
> 
> Tangential special thanks to Sam Graebner, who voiced Odyn in Mrs. Friedas. Just because Odyn doesn't really show up in this fic, doesn't mean his sinister influence isn't still hanging around. A thousand and one knives leave some pretty long-lasting scars.


End file.
